The Fashioning of French Opera (1672-1791)

As the forerunners to the Paris Opera, the Academie d’operas (1669-1672) and the Academie royale de musique (1672-1791) inspired first historical then aesthetic research, research that appeared very steadily through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, researchers and performers alike began to change their perspective on the institution and its legacy, shifting away from the Academie’s image as a tool used in the propaganda machine and towards a focus on aspects of performance practice. However, despite the scale and diversity of the current body of scholarship, many facets of the Academie royale de musique remain unexplored. It was first and foremost a cultural institution, one that developed its own identity and savoir-faire, some aspects of which still need to be uncovered. This study aims to reconsider the institution from a new angle, thanks to an interdisciplinary approach and three sustained motivations: questioning the institution’s very nature, as well as its place and status in the French academic network; highlighting practical, logistical, and material questions as yet unexplored; and reevaluating not only its interactions with other theaters in Paris, at court, and in the provinces, but also the ways its repertoire spread in general. For once, poets and composers are not the main subject. We choose to concentrate instead on those who helped the pieces to exist and to come to life: directors and administrators, performers, teachers, and craftsmen. The papers focus on their hierarchical relationships, their decision-making authority, and their respective responsibilities, in order to better understand all that the fashioning of operas entails.

Barbara Nestola, Benoit Dratwicki, Julien Dubruque, Thomas Leconte Introduction Thomas Leconte Identity: An Unconventional Academy Benoit Dratwicki Production: Authority and Responsibility in the Fashioning of Opera Barbara Nestola Networks: An Interactive Academy Identity directed by Thomas Leconte Thomas Vernet "Raise Music to the Heights We Had Promised Ourselves:" The Singular Voice of the Academie Royale de Musique Laurent Guillo The "Two Bodies" of the Academie Royale de Musique or "Les Caracteres de la Transcendance" Lola Salem Regulating Singers' Pensions at the Opera: Royal Arbitrage and Administrative Law Francoise Dartois-Lapeyre Two Interacting Academies: The Academie Royale de Danse and the Academie Royale de Musique France Marchal-Ninosque Creating Dance Professionals in the Capital City: The Paris Opera's School of Dance at the Heart of a Late-Eighteenth-Century Monopoly Pascale Cugy Impressions of Celebrities: Opera Actors and Spectators in the Parisian Fashion-Plate Under Louis XIV 95 Gregoire Ichou, Jean-Michel Vinciguerra From Name to Image: Portraits of Singers and Dancers Attached to the Paris Opera (1715-1791) Production directed by Benoit Dratwicki and Julien Dubruque Pascal Denecheau Dealing With Jean-Baptiste Lully's Legacy: Francine and the Directors of the Paris Opera From 1687 to 1733 Sylvie Bouissou Aesthetic Stakes Meet Economic Obligation: Director's Policies at the Academie Royale de Musique (1733-1791) Benjamin Pintiaux The Making of the Libretto, From Beaujoyeulx to Pellegrin: Prolegomena to a Poietic Analysis of Opera Lyrics Thomas Soury Opera Poet: An Author Without Authority? Loic Chahine Reversing the Authorship: The Case of the Divertissement Julien Dubruque Performers and Composers: The Members of the Petit Choeur Between Lully and Rameau Rebecca Harris-Warrick, Laura Naudeix Ballet Masters at Work, 1672-1764 Graham Sadler The Role of the Maitre de Musique: Evidence From the Academie Royale de Musique's Performing Material Benoit Dratwicki Operas under Construction: Rehearsal Procedures and Methods at the Academie Royale de Musique Benoit Dratwicki Singers, Composers and Repertoire Barbara Nestola Rising Stars: Added Airs as a Strategy for Singers' Self-Promotion Francoise Escande Preserving the Repertory at All Cost: When Berton and Dauvergne Were Bringing Destouches up to Date Networks directed by Barbara Nestola Barbara Nestola The World of Opera in the Repertory of the Comedie-Italienne: Appropriation, Reinterpretation, and Synthesis of Operatic Codes (1690-1697) 295 Judith le Blanc The Opera as Reflected in Theatrical Parodies and Critiques Pauline Lemaigre-Gaffier From Gift to Mutualized Management: The Menus-Plaisirs at the Service of the Academie Royale de Musique Lois Rosow The Royal Court, the Opera, and the Opera's Copyists in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: Lallemand and Durand as Independent Contractors Petra Dotla?ilova From the Idea to the Fabric. Costume Making at the Opera and Exchanges With Other Parisian Stages Natasha Roule The Performance and Adaptation of the Tragedie en Musique for French Provincial Stages (1684-1750) Benedicte Hertz The Academie Royale de Musique of Lyon Confronted to the Parisian Model: "Giving Form to the Theatrical Spectacle" in a French City (1739-1750) Sources and Bibliography Literary and Musical Sources Archives Sources and Studies Abstracts Index of Works Index of Names

• Edited by Barbara Nestola
• Edited by Benoit Dratwicki
• Edited by Julien Dubruque
• Edited by Thomas Leconte